8 Apr 2009 | Uncategorized
Dyab Abou Jahjah is the Lebanese-born founder of the Arab European League, an Antwerp-based organisation which claims to speak for Europe’s Muslims. The Arab European League gained a certain notoriety when it weighed into the Motoons debate by publishing a series of anti-Semitic cartoons, ‘testing the limits’ of free expression in Europe.
Abou Jahjah is also, according to this New York Times profile, a former teenage member of Hezbollah, and still apparently a supporter of that organisation, having gone so far as to say he would return to Lebanon to fight with them against Israel in 2006.
Abou Jahjah was in London on Monday 30 March to address a Stop the War Coalition meeting, alongside Hezbollah MP Hussein El-Hajj Hassan, among others. He returned to Belgium after the meeting, with the intention of coming back to London for more meetings on the Friday of that week.
However, when he attempted to enter Britain again, he was prevented from doing so by customs officials, and sent back to Belgium after being detained for six hours.
Naturally, he is not happy about this, and believes the reason he has been barred is a campaign by ‘Zionists’.
In a statement, the Home Office told Index on Censorship:
‘This individual has been barred from entering the UK as we believe he is not conducive to the public good — he has made statements that incite religious hatred and place community harmony at risk.
‘The government supports freedom of expression, but believes it needs to be exercised responsibly. We will continue to oppose extremism in all its forms.
‘That is why we are determined to stop those who try to spread hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country and that was the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced in October last year.
‘EEA nationals can be refused admission to the UK on grounds of public security.’
Which is consistent with the previous reasons for banning Geert Wilders, Fred Phelps, and others. But it is curious that Dyab Abou Jahjah, who has been on the political radar for several years now, seemingly only came to the attention of the Home Office last week.
30 Mar 2009 | Middle East and North Africa, News
A youth orchestra from Jenin in the West Bank has been disbanded after its conductor arranged a concert for Holocaust survivors in Israel.
Read more here
25 Mar 2009 | Uncategorized
Editor’s note: Index on Censorship is committed to facilitating open and vigorous debate. We will endeavour to correct factual inaccuracies wherever they occur.
An article posted on our website on 17 March inadvertently accused the Jewish Chronicle of deliberately ‘outing’ and ‘naming and shaming’ members of the cast of the play Seven Jewish Children, ‘with the intention, it would appear, of impacting on their future careers’ .
We accept that this is untrue.
The following is a corrected version of the original story.
This is a guest post by Sonja Linden
The BBC has declined to broadcast a radio version of Caryl Churchill’s ten-minute stage play Seven Jewish Children on the grounds of impartiality.
The play, written in response to the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and as a fundraising event for the victims of this onslaught, has been described by critics not just as unbalanced but ‘anti-Semitic’. I have seen the play and choose to disagree. My response was underscored by the fact that a Jewish actor friend of mine, who is highly sensitive to criticism of Israel, agreed to take part in the play. Her sensitivities are linked to the fact that she was in the Warsaw Ghetto as a child, and that she spent five formative years in Israel, when it was a nascent state in the early 50s. She told me how keenly she had scrutinised the text before accepting the role but that it was her considered opinion that the statements in Churchill’s play had veracity, and that the play was not anti-Semitic. She was deeply shocked, subsequently, not just at the critique of the play as anti-Semitic, but at the viciousness of the attacks on it in the Jewish press, in particular the Jewish Chronicle.
The increasing viciousness and vituperation of such attacks, in particular attacks by Jews on fellow Jews, such as myself, who dare to hold Israel publicly to account on ethical and human rights grounds, is not only disturbing but begs a number of questions. One of them is the issue of creeping censorship. The cry ‘anti-Semitism’ as a gagging tool in the face of criticism of Zionism or Israel is an issue that needs serious examination.
A small example of the latter is the response I recently had from the artistic director of a leading regional theatre in the USA concerning my play Welcome to Ramallah, co-written with Adah Kay. Impressive as the play was, he said, it would be difficult to get it produced by any mainstream theatre in the States. Personally, he added, he could not get it past his own audience.
This is precisely the line taken by the BBC as regards Caryl Churchill’s play: ‘After due consideration we felt it would not work for our audience’. It’s a statement that needs unpacking. What exactly does it mean? Who is this monolithic audience for whom it ‘would not work’? Does every play have to ‘work’? Surely there must be allowance made for some plays to work less than others? What about the more cryptic plays of Beckett? Do they ‘work’ for what the BBC perceives to be its audience? It is clear that the gauge here is one of content rather than accessibility. In this context a play is deemed not to ‘work’ if it invites a hostile response on the grounds of its contents, as witnessed during the Royal Court’s production of the play. But does such hostility matter? Can the broad shoulders of the BBC not support a degree of flak? It would appear that Seven Jewish Children has been rejected out of fear of furore, a furore that it is ironically even more likely to invoke by its very rejection, as happened very recently with the BBC’s refusal to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for Gaza, also on grounds of impartiality.
There are a number of further questions here also. Should a play not be judged primarily on its artistic merit? Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer and Radio 4’s drama commissioning editor Jeremy Howe both agreed that it was a ‘brilliant piece’. Should a piece of art be required to be balanced? And if the BBC feels that this is its mission, even in the realm of art, what are the implications of Mark Damazer and Jeremy Howe’s view that ‘it would be nearly impossible to run a drama that counters Caryl Churchill’s view’. Why? Surely a counter-play could be produced? Caryl Churchill only needed a weekend apparently.
If ‘balance’ is indeed the BBC’s key criterion here, why not build a discussion programme around the broadcast for a mixture of responses? And, crucially, what is the BBC so frightened of that it cannot risk a ten-minute radio play by one of Britain’s leading and internationally renowned playwrights?
Sonja Linden is a playwright and founding artistic director of iceandfire theatre www.iceandfire.co.uk
2 Mar 2009 | News
The United States has followed Canada and Israel in boycotting a UN conference on ‘anti-racism’ to be held later this year in Geneva.
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